Swashbuckler to fighter is cool if you don't want to bother with having a party thief. Focus on the utility skills (traps/open lock/illusion). The only problem is the best level to get to before dualing is 10 (or even 15) which means they're not useful thief at the beginning of SoA (unless you slog for the full 1M 'soft' xp you can get from SoD.
If you're doing a full saga run, I think you can execute this dual at level 5 Swashbuckler, and frankly, that's probably the best. You won't get a ton of bonuses from the swashbuckler class, but you don't need them. You will be limited to find traps and open locks, but again, you don't truly need much else. Technically you will have enough point to potentially boost pick pockets to a decent level as well. 60 locks and 80 traps is more than sufficient.
You end up with primarily a fighter with a slight thac0, damage and AC boost, all for the cost of a mere 10,000 xp, which won't even be much in BG1. You can get a head start on two pips on one melee weapon type (I recommend daggers here). It will probably be your secondary weapon, as you will have three pips in something as a fighter prior to the unlock. Most likely want to go with a blunt weapon as your primary as a fighter. The beauty is the unlock will occur at level 6, so you get that next weapon pip right as the full class is unlocked.
Again, you don't get much of a bonus from the kit itself, this dual set-up is more about minimizing the thief levels in a party, and thus maximizing the other classes' presence. Pairs well with stealth rangers like Kivan, Minsc, and eventually Valygar. Lets you recruit the non-thief arcanes like Edwin, Neera instead of relying on Imoen, Jan or Nalia.
I might try this once. Never tried swashbuckler.
I also never played bard
>I also never played bard <
.....Bards are super cool, especially the Blade. A semi-decent weapon user, supporting spell caster, and part time thief. Jack of all trades, master of none, so to speak. Offensive spin + Melf's Meteors can be quite a nasty attack mode. Or you can tank up with defensive spin and cast attack spells like horror or fireball. You can also use wizard items like wands; wands of fireball or cloudkill are always crowd pleasers. And eventually you get thief HLAs.
.....Clearly they aren't the best at any one skill, but overall they are great group supports, have good survival skills, and can put a serious hurting on many types of opponents. And if I totally run out of attack spells, I can dual wield some nasty weapons. Currently my Blade is wielding Adjatha the Drinker and Arbane's Sword, both of which convey some nice immunities. +2 weqpons will hit most things in SoA, but if push comes to shove and I really, really need +3 weapons, I have Celestial Fury and the Blade of Roses. My crew also has the +3 Flail of Ages, but I have zero skill in flails, so Viconia is currently wielding that puppy. Viconia btw is best cleric; better than Anomen. Her magic Resistance is the key difference here. Aomen is better at melee combat due to his warrior skills, but Viconia's MR offests this, IMO. She does need a strength boost, but strength boosts are a dime a dozen in SoA. She is currently wearing a Girdle of Hill Giant strength. That flail is total death to trolls, btw, as it does both fire and acid damage.
>I also never played bard <
.....Bards are super cool, especially the Blade. A semi-decent weapon user, supporting spell caster, and part time thief. Jack of all trades, master of none, so to speak. Offensive spin + Melf's Meteors can be quite a nasty attack mode. Or you can tank up with defensive spin and cast attack spells like horror or fireball. You can also use wizard items like wands; wands of fireball or cloudkill are always crowd pleasers. And eventually you get thief HLAs.
.....Clearly they aren't the best at any one skill, but overall they are great group supports, have good survival skills, and can put a serious hurting on many types of opponents. And if I totally run out of attack spells, I can dual wield some nasty weapons. Currently my Blade is wielding Adjatha the Drinker and Arbane's Sword, both of which convey some nice immunities. +2 weqpons will hit most things in SoA, but if push comes to shove and I really, really need +3 weapons, I have Celestial Fury and the Blade of Roses. My crew also has the +3 Flail of Ages, but I have zero skill in flails, so Viconia is currently wielding that puppy. Viconia btw is best cleric; better than Anomen. Her magic Resistance is the key difference here. Aomen is better at melee combat due to his warrior skills, but Viconia's MR offests this, IMO. She does need a strength boost, but strength boosts are a dime a dozen in SoA. She is currently wearing a Girdle of Hill Giant strength. That flail is total death to trolls, btw, as it does both fire and acid damage.
Yes, this is the type that can run really fast with offensive spin right? Seen people use it for speedruns.
Yes bards you be good. You can exploit and trick ur way true this game with all the items. And a bard should be very good at that.
Having access to all wands, all arcane scrolls, pots and items is a inzane feature.
Combined with pickpocket to fill your pockets.
I now started a shadow dancer at work today. And for the first time i play inzane instead of legacy of bhaal. Just to speed it up a little. Currently level 7, but i stand at the gates or durlags tower with 74 scrolls of stone to flesh and a 8 hour protection from petrification. So next time i play i will add on another 7000*75 experience to that pool.
On the steam version i could not exploit kill drizzt, so my first good scimitar will be rashads talon at the same spot. And i talked to dorn just to get a early +1 walasaki.
Everyone is so inzanly squishy at inzane. Got myself the +1 crossbow of speed as well. Zurlags stealth boots, amulet of shielding, amulet of blast, the good gloves. +1 ring and fire protection ring. With money saved for anti charm/hold.
So im kinda powerplay + speedrun combine my intention is to late dual class to mage as a level 2x shadow dancer. Save all the scrolls i steal, earn lot of expiernce via pickpocket/open locks/find traps early in bg2, then when i dual have enough spellscrolls to get a decent mage level right after dualing. The idea is a minimum of: use all items, spike trap, assassination, avoid death combi. Or something like that. I dont need all that, but i want to be powerfull
>Not to mention, a bard means no one ever has to spend a spell slot on Identify!<
Depends on your level. Bardic Lore ability doesn't hit automatic identification of items until maybe early in chapter 2 of SoA. But yeah, after that, it's a wash. And even before that, Identify is a spell you can learn really early, even in BG 1.
Currently i started a shadowmaster on work. No exp cap. To speed it up i run bgee in inzane mode.
Its now level 14, closing up on level 15 in bgee. I will end bgee with 2,2mill experience i guess.
Then when i come to bg2ee the idea is to get a certain ammount of relevant hla’s before i transform to mage. Ammoung those will be:
Use all items
Shadow clone
Shadow maze
And the last shadowdancer only.
Assassination
Avoid death
Then i will transform to mage. This will allow me to use a wider range of items as a mage, with shadow clone to save important spell slots etc.
I will steal all scrolls and read my way to a decent mage level. Now that i think of it, scribe scroll could be abused for this, but its to time consuming to bother with.
I will play on legacy of bhaal. I will assume thieving skills and early kills will be enought to secure both items and experience needed to get mage strong enought to starts it progression to revive the thief class.
Will be a fun experiment. I will not revive thief class before mage is like lvl 27 or smt. But it will be nice endgame material!
I am currently running an Invoker dualed to Cleric at lvl 12. Starting as a mage it is a bit squishy but getting hit is not really much of a problem after getting those mage lvls back. The cleric has a lot of spells that benefit from the Invoker's -2 saving throws. Blade Barrier, Skellie Warriors and the Wand of Cloudkill let me basically walk through the Planar Prison like it was a Sunday stroll. Greater Werewolf cell with its goon squad, meh, Holy Power+Righteous Magic+DUHM+Haste= No problemo. I have to say I feel the lack of Greater Malison because it is opposition school but so far it has not been a much of a problem just so used to using it, ToB might be a different story. Still, I think Doom with Chant in a Minor Sequencer should make up for it a bit, with the minus Invoker spell saves it should be okay. Right now lvls 12/16 (gained a lvl when the warden took a dirt, er, squishy floor nap) looking forward to HLAs for the Evocation spells and summons. Then will come the inevitable overpoweredness until later in ToB when she will have to work for her money again. Looking forward to it though. The echoing laughter that fills the suddenly silent cave after Simmy's Firestorms in Chain Contingency turn Abazigal into a smoldering, stinking bar-b-q. Hard to believe how much I still love this game after all these years.
Invoker does a good job dualed into thief as well. After UAI can use opposition school scrolls so I suppose most of the specialists schools would be okay. Illusionist for a back stabby thief perhaps. Really though, this would all be for the extra spells, saving throws would not be much of a factor unless traps have a spell school. Anyone know?
I've ran a Bounty Hunter dualed to mage, it was perfectly okayish. After 11 they get those stun traps, which I think are the best unless you are soloing a straight BH and the Maze traps edge them out a bit. A Cleric would probably get more milage out of the traps than a Mage, haven't tried that combo yet. Dual after 11 if possible either way, or maybe 12 for the extra pip because the Mage is pip deficient, the benefits of the traps are not worth the headache of a high lvl dual.
Starting in BG2 most duals can happen shortly after escaping Jony Boy's fun house. There are plenty experience heavy/workload light stuffs to do then that can get your character up and swinging in no time.
I've ran a Bounty Hunter dualed to mage, it was perfectly okayish. After 11 they get those stun traps ... Dual after 11 if possible either way ...
It kind of doesn't matter. Which trap you get depends on your innate caster level, which is (after the dual completes) the average of your two class levels. Not your bounty hunter level. It continues to progress post-dual, though slowly; you can't ever "lock in" a particular trap type.
One can dream about playing a kensai to level 36 then dualling to mage, but the issue of warriors dualed to mages is that once you go mage, casting a spell is way better than anything your warrior can do. So basically, it's not worth it to go over 9 and 13 for dual classes.
Not trying to pick on you in particular, but just going to disagree on this build, as someone who has done a full-saga run of it. I don't think it's all that strong, ultimately. I think both a fighter/cleric dual and a fighter/druid dual are better (and obviously even stronger with berserker kit). Pointing this out because this is frequently cited as a powerful build and imo it's not.
The ranger only gives you two pips. And because you're cleric, already granted two-weapon style pips, it's just kind of a waste of "fighter levels". You get very little benefit from the extra proficiencies, since you're already limited by cleric in your weapon choices -- sling and the blunt weapons. Not to mention you're starting out BG1 by eschewing a longbow ranger in favor of either a melee ranger or a sling ranger. You could just burn the points here, I suppose.
The ranger's stealth just doesn't synergize well with the cleric class, which often wants to be as tanky as possible regarding armor choice. Ranger's barkskin can help here and you can do the tedious armor switching too. But is that fun? Does it feel powerful? Not in my experience.
Clerics also tend to peter out in late game power. They're most useful, especially for inexperienced players, right as they unlock things like raise dead, heal, resurrection. Their early game spells are also dominant at the low levels of the saga -- command, hold person, silence. But they don't have spells that scale quite as well as druid, imo. Having a cleric that's underleveled in the late-stages of the saga ends up being sub-optimal. The extra ranger spells are okay but most of them are not especially useful.
Multi is a different story, since multi-fighter builds are also limited to two pips. But in terms of raw power dual builds, you almost always want a fighter class, imo.
Not trying to pick on you in particular, but just going to disagree on this build, as someone who has done a full-saga run of it. I don't think it's all that strong, ultimately. I think both a fighter/cleric dual and a fighter/druid dual are better (and obviously even stronger with berserker kit). Pointing this out because this is frequently cited as a powerful build and imo it's not.
The ranger only gives you two pips. And because you're cleric, already granted two-weapon style pips, it's just kind of a waste of "fighter levels". You get very little benefit from the extra proficiencies, since you're already limited by cleric in your weapon choices -- sling and the blunt weapons. Not to mention you're starting out BG1 by eschewing a longbow ranger in favor of either a melee ranger or a sling ranger. You could just burn the points here, I suppose.
The ranger's stealth just doesn't synergize well with the cleric class, which often wants to be as tanky as possible regarding armor choice. Ranger's barkskin can help here and you can do the tedious armor switching too. But is that fun? Does it feel powerful? Not in my experience.
Clerics also tend to peter out in late game power. They're most useful, especially for inexperienced players, right as they unlock things like raise dead, heal, resurrection. Their early game spells are also dominant at the low levels of the saga -- command, hold person, silence. But they don't have spells that scale quite as well as druid, imo. Having a cleric that's underleveled in the late-stages of the saga ends up being sub-optimal. The extra ranger spells are okay but most of them are not especially useful.
Multi is a different story, since multi-fighter builds are also limited to two pips. But in terms of raw power dual builds, you almost always want a fighter class, imo.
Multiclass ranger/cleric with an extra ‘0’ instead of ‘1’ is inzanly good
Cleric side decide spell level, and druid spells up to max level is then added to spell book (call of lightning, insects, stoneskin, nature peace etc, pixie dust, fire elementals) and you still have all the powerfull tools or cleric to really pump out melee damage.
Early its a cakewalk, even in legacy of bhaal.
Sanctuary makes it safe to run into early experience, right into ankegg cave for 2500 experience on ur way to another 2500 experience from water priestess.
The 2 starting points in dual combined with 3-4
wepon pips makes you go strong dual instantly combined with stuns from command and hold person. Then you get animate dead and call of lightning. Then its nymph time for 5 x call of lightning, stun, or mix or skellies and nymphs. And then fire elementals and pixie dust and stoneskin. Lastly nature peace and invisibility combi which makes everything die or blind. Super to blind beholders and then rain down fire.
Endgame you have all the godly spells, and you have a strong and protected fighter, with cleric buffs and greater wirlwind or improved haste.
You are not wrong. I forgot a very important thing.
You have to change the .ini setting and allow the ranger to access the druid spell list (as Gel87 suggested). Otherwise, you are totally right, better to have a pure fighter dualled to...
One can dream about playing a kensai to level 36 then dualling to mage, but the issue of warriors dualed to mages is that once you go mage, casting a spell is way better than anything your warrior can do. So basically, it's not worth it to go over 9 and 13 for dual classes.
The reason i go 20+ on shadowmaster is to benefit from use all items, avoid death, assassination, shadow maze, shadow clone.
Its spell slot advantage.
I can wear helm, and other relevant stuff.
I have stronger melee etc.
Ranger/cleric dual class seems to reach 4 lvl 7 spells.
Mean while ranger9 - cleric should get way more right?
Having a cleric that's underleveled in the late-stages of the saga ...
Not really an issue in the dual discussed (at level 9). You're basically one level behind a pure cleric with the same total XP, which is absolutely insignificant past level 25 or so. And for that one level worth of XP and being human, you get a bunch of extra HP, +1 APR assuming a specialized weapon, the extra to-hit and damage from weapon specialization, weapon style specialization, and those little ranger perks.
Level 9 warrior -> cleric is absolutely stronger than a single-class cleric, and can make far better use of the cleric's combat buffs.
Now, comparing ranger -> cleric to fighter -> cleric? I agree with you on that one. Fighter -> druid ... that one's different. More of a spellcaster, less of a warrior; you don't have those combat buffs in your spell list, so you're throwing out nymphs and insect swarms and fire elementals instead of buffing yourself up and bashing. Hard to directly compare.
You are not wrong. I forgot a very important thing.
You have to change the .ini setting and allow the ranger to access the druid spell list (as Gel87 suggested). Otherwise, you are totally right, better to have a pure fighter dualled to...
There is another very important thing… ranger starts with 2 pips in dual. Huge advantage early and very wepon skill saving.
And then you can:
Mace and warhammer and sling or quarterstaff.
As a solo char flexibility is nice. The maxed one wepon type means little vs flexibility as solo char.
Might have forgotten some, but theese slays.
Immagine walking invisible into a stack of beholders. Blind them with nature peace and rain down fire on them. Nature peace dont break invisibility. So if any rolls a mr, just cast again.
And the combi of skeleton warriors + nymps is inzane early.
You can beat pretty much with this combi.
Fire elementals to fight strong magic immune enemies, skeletons to fight mage, and 2-3 nymphs in the back to cast tons of crowd control and 100 damage call of lighning landing 3 times each on failed saving throw.
Drizzt dies instantly, karoug dies instantly.
Just walk up wirh sanctuary, cast magic res as its not a hostile spell to put drizzt on 2x% mr. Now rain down 5 x call of lightning from nymph and watch drizzt explode in legacy of bhaal.
Even in crowded places like bandit camp the next call of lightning strike will choose new enemies. So you insta kill 5 enemies, and just allow people to push into death.
I have put my eyes on 2 dual classes:
Stalker (13) - Cleric:
I guess i will be able to squeeze out 2250000 exp from bgee without xp cap.
So i may or may not revive the stalker class in bgee.
So i start with 2 pips in dual and get to place additional 8 profience points.
3 dual
2 flail
2 mace
1 war hammer
1 staff
1 sling
So as cleric i choose:
1 warhammer
1 sling
1 staff
And then when ranger is revived i guess i will end at.
3
2
2
2
2
2
- I will have 3 attacks per round, 4 if hasted.
- I will have 6 if improved haste from ring of gaxx, however i guess improved haste will be used mainly for deva.
- I will have all cleric and all druid spells thanks to change in baldur lua file. (Which is the main reason). I have tried the multiclass, but i dont like to end up with only 4 x lvl 7 spells.
- Haste, minor spell turning is epic.
All the things that may end a no reload runs such as charm, lightning bolt, call of lightning, mental domination, hold person, dispel magic, feeblemind, magic missle +++ is covered!
- I will take that any day over a heavy plate mail.
The other one is:
Mage(4) - cleric:
Benefits:
Find familiar (summon each game for 3x hp increase each time)
Protection from petrificarion
Blind
Strenght
Sleep of no legacy of bhaal
Mirror immage
Invisibility
All the scrolls in the game!
Staff of magi!
Robe of vecna!
All the wands in the game!
Mage 4 = only 10k exp.
150 candlekeep
2500 sonner bowl to priestess
900 marv dialog
400 noober dialog
1000 bringing dog to boy
1500 brage to temple
1500 samuel to temple
= 7950 (1 x invisibility, which is enought to safe do ankegg cave together with invi pot from naskel)
+ 1500 ankegg
Now you get dire charm scroll from ankegg cave, which means you can take out algernon with zero rep loss.
Then do perdue sword for 500xp.(charm gnoll slasher), you also have wand of ice and wand of fire.
Ur now on 10k. Time to dual.
Once dualed, do mutamin garden together with gjorak the ghoul as cleric to revive mage class.
(2 x 7000xp, 6 x 2500 xp = 32k xp)
I have put my eyes on 2 dual classes:
Stalker (13) - Cleric:
I guess i will be able to squeeze out 2250000 exp from bgee without xp cap.
So i may or may not revive the stalker class in bgee.
So i start with 2 pips in dual and get to place additional 8 profience points.
3 dual
2 flail
2 mace
1 war hammer
1 staff
1 sling
So as cleric i choose:
1 warhammer
1 sling
1 staff
And then when ranger is revived i guess i will end at.
3
2
2
2
2
2
- I will have 3 attacks per round, 4 if hasted.
- I will have 6 if improved haste from ring of gaxx, however i guess improved haste will be used mainly for deva.
- I will have all cleric and all druid spells thanks to change in baldur lua file. (Which is the main reason). I have tried the multiclass, but i dont like to end up with only 4 x lvl 7 spells.
- Haste, minor spell turning is epic.
All the things that may end a no reload runs such as charm, lightning bolt, call of lightning, mental domination, hold person, dispel magic, feeblemind, magic missle +++ is covered!
- I will take that any day over a heavy plate mail.
The other one is:
Mage(4) - cleric:
Benefits:
Find familiar (summon each game for 3x hp increase each time)
Protection from petrificarion
Blind
Strenght
Sleep of no legacy of bhaal
Mirror immage
Invisibility
All the scrolls in the game!
Staff of magi!
Robe of vecna!
All the wands in the game!
Mage 4 = only 10k exp.
150 candlekeep
2500 sonner bowl to priestess
900 marv dialog
400 noober dialog
1000 bringing dog to boy
1500 brage to temple
1500 samuel to temple
= 7950 (1 x invisibility, which is enought to safe do ankegg cave together with invi pot from naskel)
+ 1500 ankegg
Now you get dire charm scroll from ankegg cave, which means you can take out algernon with zero rep loss.
Then do perdue sword for 500xp.(charm gnoll slasher), you also have wand of ice and wand of fire.
Ur now on 10k. Time to dual.
Once dualed, do mutamin garden together with gjorak the ghoul as cleric to revive mage class.
(2 x 7000xp, 6 x 2500 xp = 32k xp)
actually, if you do 13 stalker to cleric, you will get 3.5 APR ( +1/2 for level 7 and 13 and +1/2 for specialization )
so that means 7 APR with IH
also, i never though of using find familiar for all 3 games, for bonus HP, i wasnt aware that you could summon one in BG2 and ToB, does that allow to have 2 familiars? ( or i suppose 3 if you include bg1 ) or do you have to kill one ( or 2) of them off?
I have put my eyes on 2 dual classes:
Stalker (13) - Cleric:
I guess i will be able to squeeze out 2250000 exp from bgee without xp cap.
So i may or may not revive the stalker class in bgee.
So i start with 2 pips in dual and get to place additional 8 profience points.
3 dual
2 flail
2 mace
1 war hammer
1 staff
1 sling
So as cleric i choose:
1 warhammer
1 sling
1 staff
And then when ranger is revived i guess i will end at.
3
2
2
2
2
2
- I will have 3 attacks per round, 4 if hasted.
- I will have 6 if improved haste from ring of gaxx, however i guess improved haste will be used mainly for deva.
- I will have all cleric and all druid spells thanks to change in baldur lua file. (Which is the main reason). I have tried the multiclass, but i dont like to end up with only 4 x lvl 7 spells.
- Haste, minor spell turning is epic.
All the things that may end a no reload runs such as charm, lightning bolt, call of lightning, mental domination, hold person, dispel magic, feeblemind, magic missle +++ is covered!
- I will take that any day over a heavy plate mail.
The other one is:
Mage(4) - cleric:
Benefits:
Find familiar (summon each game for 3x hp increase each time)
Protection from petrificarion
Blind
Strenght
Sleep of no legacy of bhaal
Mirror immage
Invisibility
All the scrolls in the game!
Staff of magi!
Robe of vecna!
All the wands in the game!
Mage 4 = only 10k exp.
150 candlekeep
2500 sonner bowl to priestess
900 marv dialog
400 noober dialog
1000 bringing dog to boy
1500 brage to temple
1500 samuel to temple
= 7950 (1 x invisibility, which is enought to safe do ankegg cave together with invi pot from naskel)
+ 1500 ankegg
Now you get dire charm scroll from ankegg cave, which means you can take out algernon with zero rep loss.
Then do perdue sword for 500xp.(charm gnoll slasher), you also have wand of ice and wand of fire.
Ur now on 10k. Time to dual.
Once dualed, do mutamin garden together with gjorak the ghoul as cleric to revive mage class.
(2 x 7000xp, 6 x 2500 xp = 32k xp)
actually, if you do 13 stalker to cleric, you will get 3.5 APR ( +1/2 for level 7 and 13 and +1/2 for specialization )
so that means 7 APR with IH
also, i never though of using find familiar for all 3 games, for bonus HP, i wasnt aware that you could summon one in BG2 and ToB, does that allow to have 2 familiars? ( or i suppose 3 if you include bg1 ) or do you have to kill one ( or 2) of them off?
Yes.
When importing ur character from bgee or sod file into you will loose all ur inventory.
Dropping familiar from inventory does not result in conc or hp loss.
And i dont remember excactly how it works when throne of bhaal but think it works.
There are some item drops while going to sod as well. I think familiar should be in invent slot 1.
ofc you are prevented from manually removing it from inventory.
Dragon diciplines in LOB difficulty reach like 300hp plus due to this combined with its conc increase.
If you continue from one campaign into the next, at the end of the BG1 or SoA campaign, you keep your existing familiar and don't get the opportunity to summon a new one for more HP.
If, instead, you start the new campaign with the "Import" button, that just brings the character, leaving behind the familiar and any marker effects - so you can summon a new one.
The cost, of course, is that it resets all of your recruited companions to the default starting point for the new campaign, and you won't have them in your party until you can recruit them normally.
In "normal" gameplay with one created character and a recruited party, this trick is absolutely not worthwhile.
If you continue from one campaign into the next, at the end of the BG1 or SoA campaign, you keep your existing familiar and don't get the opportunity to summon a new one for more HP.
If, instead, you start the new campaign with the "Import" button, that just brings the character, leaving behind the familiar and any marker effects - so you can summon a new one.
The cost, of course, is that it resets all of your recruited companions to the default starting point for the new campaign, and you won't have them in your party until you can recruit them normally.
In "normal" gameplay with one created character and a recruited party, this trick is absolutely not worthwhile.
Yes that is true. Im usually solo playing though.
But by importing save file im pretty sure you will be able to cast find familiar again in bg2ee.
Loading final save in sod, im unsure.
Loading final save in TOB im unsure as well.
Comments
I might try this once. Never tried swashbuckler.
I also never played bard
.....Bards are super cool, especially the Blade. A semi-decent weapon user, supporting spell caster, and part time thief. Jack of all trades, master of none, so to speak. Offensive spin + Melf's Meteors can be quite a nasty attack mode. Or you can tank up with defensive spin and cast attack spells like horror or fireball. You can also use wizard items like wands; wands of fireball or cloudkill are always crowd pleasers. And eventually you get thief HLAs.
.....Clearly they aren't the best at any one skill, but overall they are great group supports, have good survival skills, and can put a serious hurting on many types of opponents. And if I totally run out of attack spells, I can dual wield some nasty weapons. Currently my Blade is wielding Adjatha the Drinker and Arbane's Sword, both of which convey some nice immunities. +2 weqpons will hit most things in SoA, but if push comes to shove and I really, really need +3 weapons, I have Celestial Fury and the Blade of Roses. My crew also has the +3 Flail of Ages, but I have zero skill in flails, so Viconia is currently wielding that puppy. Viconia btw is best cleric; better than Anomen. Her magic Resistance is the key difference here. Aomen is better at melee combat due to his warrior skills, but Viconia's MR offests this, IMO. She does need a strength boost, but strength boosts are a dime a dozen in SoA. She is currently wearing a Girdle of Hill Giant strength. That flail is total death to trolls, btw, as it does both fire and acid damage.
Yes, this is the type that can run really fast with offensive spin right? Seen people use it for speedruns.
Yes bards you be good. You can exploit and trick ur way true this game with all the items. And a bard should be very good at that.
Having access to all wands, all arcane scrolls, pots and items is a inzane feature.
Combined with pickpocket to fill your pockets.
I now started a shadow dancer at work today. And for the first time i play inzane instead of legacy of bhaal. Just to speed it up a little. Currently level 7, but i stand at the gates or durlags tower with 74 scrolls of stone to flesh and a 8 hour protection from petrification. So next time i play i will add on another 7000*75 experience to that pool.
On the steam version i could not exploit kill drizzt, so my first good scimitar will be rashads talon at the same spot. And i talked to dorn just to get a early +1 walasaki.
Everyone is so inzanly squishy at inzane. Got myself the +1 crossbow of speed as well. Zurlags stealth boots, amulet of shielding, amulet of blast, the good gloves. +1 ring and fire protection ring. With money saved for anti charm/hold.
So im kinda powerplay + speedrun combine
Depends on your level. Bardic Lore ability doesn't hit automatic identification of items until maybe early in chapter 2 of SoA. But yeah, after that, it's a wash. And even before that, Identify is a spell you can learn really early, even in BG 1.
Its now level 14, closing up on level 15 in bgee. I will end bgee with 2,2mill experience i guess.
Then when i come to bg2ee the idea is to get a certain ammount of relevant hla’s before i transform to mage. Ammoung those will be:
Use all items
Shadow clone
Shadow maze
And the last shadowdancer only.
Assassination
Avoid death
Then i will transform to mage. This will allow me to use a wider range of items as a mage, with shadow clone to save important spell slots etc.
I will steal all scrolls and read my way to a decent mage level. Now that i think of it, scribe scroll could be abused for this, but its to time consuming to bother with.
I will play on legacy of bhaal. I will assume thieving skills and early kills will be enought to secure both items and experience needed to get mage strong enought to starts it progression to revive the thief class.
Will be a fun experiment. I will not revive thief class before mage is like lvl 27 or smt. But it will be nice endgame material!
Invoker does a good job dualed into thief as well. After UAI can use opposition school scrolls so I suppose most of the specialists schools would be okay. Illusionist for a back stabby thief perhaps. Really though, this would all be for the extra spells, saving throws would not be much of a factor unless traps have a spell school. Anyone know?
I've ran a Bounty Hunter dualed to mage, it was perfectly okayish. After 11 they get those stun traps, which I think are the best unless you are soloing a straight BH and the Maze traps edge them out a bit. A Cleric would probably get more milage out of the traps than a Mage, haven't tried that combo yet. Dual after 11 if possible either way, or maybe 12 for the extra pip because the Mage is pip deficient, the benefits of the traps are not worth the headache of a high lvl dual.
Starting in BG2 most duals can happen shortly after escaping Jony Boy's fun house. There are plenty experience heavy/workload light stuffs to do then that can get your character up and swinging in no time.
Ranger 9/cleric 40
Berserker 9/mage 40
One can dream about playing a kensai to level 36 then dualling to mage, but the issue of warriors dualed to mages is that once you go mage, casting a spell is way better than anything your warrior can do. So basically, it's not worth it to go over 9 and 13 for dual classes.
Not trying to pick on you in particular, but just going to disagree on this build, as someone who has done a full-saga run of it. I don't think it's all that strong, ultimately. I think both a fighter/cleric dual and a fighter/druid dual are better (and obviously even stronger with berserker kit). Pointing this out because this is frequently cited as a powerful build and imo it's not.
The ranger only gives you two pips. And because you're cleric, already granted two-weapon style pips, it's just kind of a waste of "fighter levels". You get very little benefit from the extra proficiencies, since you're already limited by cleric in your weapon choices -- sling and the blunt weapons. Not to mention you're starting out BG1 by eschewing a longbow ranger in favor of either a melee ranger or a sling ranger. You could just burn the points here, I suppose.
The ranger's stealth just doesn't synergize well with the cleric class, which often wants to be as tanky as possible regarding armor choice. Ranger's barkskin can help here and you can do the tedious armor switching too. But is that fun? Does it feel powerful? Not in my experience.
Clerics also tend to peter out in late game power. They're most useful, especially for inexperienced players, right as they unlock things like raise dead, heal, resurrection. Their early game spells are also dominant at the low levels of the saga -- command, hold person, silence. But they don't have spells that scale quite as well as druid, imo. Having a cleric that's underleveled in the late-stages of the saga ends up being sub-optimal. The extra ranger spells are okay but most of them are not especially useful.
Multi is a different story, since multi-fighter builds are also limited to two pips. But in terms of raw power dual builds, you almost always want a fighter class, imo.
Multiclass ranger/cleric with an extra ‘0’ instead of ‘1’ is inzanly good
Cleric side decide spell level, and druid spells up to max level is then added to spell book (call of lightning, insects, stoneskin, nature peace etc, pixie dust, fire elementals) and you still have all the powerfull tools or cleric to really pump out melee damage.
Early its a cakewalk, even in legacy of bhaal.
Sanctuary makes it safe to run into early experience, right into ankegg cave for 2500 experience on ur way to another 2500 experience from water priestess.
The 2 starting points in dual combined with 3-4
wepon pips makes you go strong dual instantly combined with stuns from command and hold person. Then you get animate dead and call of lightning. Then its nymph time for 5 x call of lightning, stun, or mix or skellies and nymphs. And then fire elementals and pixie dust and stoneskin. Lastly nature peace and invisibility combi which makes everything die or blind. Super to blind beholders and then rain down fire.
Endgame you have all the godly spells, and you have a strong and protected fighter, with cleric buffs and greater wirlwind or improved haste.
Just super fun.
You have to change the .ini setting and allow the ranger to access the druid spell list (as Gel87 suggested). Otherwise, you are totally right, better to have a pure fighter dualled to...
The reason i go 20+ on shadowmaster is to benefit from use all items, avoid death, assassination, shadow maze, shadow clone.
Its spell slot advantage.
I can wear helm, and other relevant stuff.
I have stronger melee etc.
Ranger/cleric dual class seems to reach 4 lvl 7 spells.
Mean while ranger9 - cleric should get way more right?
Level 9 warrior -> cleric is absolutely stronger than a single-class cleric, and can make far better use of the cleric's combat buffs.
Now, comparing ranger -> cleric to fighter -> cleric? I agree with you on that one. Fighter -> druid ... that one's different. More of a spellcaster, less of a warrior; you don't have those combat buffs in your spell list, so you're throwing out nymphs and insect swarms and fire elementals instead of buffing yourself up and bashing. Hard to directly compare.
There is another very important thing… ranger starts with 2 pips in dual. Huge advantage early and very wepon skill saving.
And then you can:
Mace and warhammer and sling or quarterstaff.
As a solo char flexibility is nice. The maxed one wepon type means little vs flexibility as solo char.
Level 1-2 druid spells suchs. Doom is situational good. But:
Level 3: call of lighning
Level 4: nymphs
Level 5: insect plague, pixie dust
Level 6: stoneskin, fire elementals
Level 7: nature peace, creeping doom
Might have forgotten some, but theese slays.
Immagine walking invisible into a stack of beholders. Blind them with nature peace and rain down fire on them. Nature peace dont break invisibility. So if any rolls a mr, just cast again.
And the combi of skeleton warriors + nymps is inzane early.
You can beat pretty much with this combi.
Fire elementals to fight strong magic immune enemies, skeletons to fight mage, and 2-3 nymphs in the back to cast tons of crowd control and 100 damage call of lighning landing 3 times each on failed saving throw.
Drizzt dies instantly, karoug dies instantly.
Just walk up wirh sanctuary, cast magic res as its not a hostile spell to put drizzt on 2x% mr. Now rain down 5 x call of lightning from nymph and watch drizzt explode in legacy of bhaal.
Even in crowded places like bandit camp the next call of lightning strike will choose new enemies. So you insta kill 5 enemies, and just allow people to push into death.
Stalker (13) - Cleric:
I guess i will be able to squeeze out 2250000 exp from bgee without xp cap.
So i may or may not revive the stalker class in bgee.
So i start with 2 pips in dual and get to place additional 8 profience points.
3 dual
2 flail
2 mace
1 war hammer
1 staff
1 sling
So as cleric i choose:
1 warhammer
1 sling
1 staff
And then when ranger is revived i guess i will end at.
3
2
2
2
2
2
- I will have 3 attacks per round, 4 if hasted.
- I will have 6 if improved haste from ring of gaxx, however i guess improved haste will be used mainly for deva.
- I will have all cleric and all druid spells thanks to change in baldur lua file. (Which is the main reason). I have tried the multiclass, but i dont like to end up with only 4 x lvl 7 spells.
- Haste, minor spell turning is epic.
All the things that may end a no reload runs such as charm, lightning bolt, call of lightning, mental domination, hold person, dispel magic, feeblemind, magic missle +++ is covered!
- I will take that any day over a heavy plate mail.
The other one is:
Mage(4) - cleric:
Benefits:
Find familiar (summon each game for 3x hp increase each time)
Protection from petrificarion
Blind
Strenght
Sleep of no legacy of bhaal
Mirror immage
Invisibility
All the scrolls in the game!
Staff of magi!
Robe of vecna!
All the wands in the game!
Mage 4 = only 10k exp.
150 candlekeep
2500 sonner bowl to priestess
900 marv dialog
400 noober dialog
1000 bringing dog to boy
1500 brage to temple
1500 samuel to temple
= 7950 (1 x invisibility, which is enought to safe do ankegg cave together with invi pot from naskel)
+ 1500 ankegg
Now you get dire charm scroll from ankegg cave, which means you can take out algernon with zero rep loss.
Then do perdue sword for 500xp.(charm gnoll slasher), you also have wand of ice and wand of fire.
Ur now on 10k. Time to dual.
Once dualed, do mutamin garden together with gjorak the ghoul as cleric to revive mage class.
(2 x 7000xp, 6 x 2500 xp = 32k xp)
actually, if you do 13 stalker to cleric, you will get 3.5 APR ( +1/2 for level 7 and 13 and +1/2 for specialization )
so that means 7 APR with IH
also, i never though of using find familiar for all 3 games, for bonus HP, i wasnt aware that you could summon one in BG2 and ToB, does that allow to have 2 familiars? ( or i suppose 3 if you include bg1 ) or do you have to kill one ( or 2) of them off?
Yes.
When importing ur character from bgee or sod file into you will loose all ur inventory.
Dropping familiar from inventory does not result in conc or hp loss.
And i dont remember excactly how it works when throne of bhaal but think it works.
There are some item drops while going to sod as well. I think familiar should be in invent slot 1.
ofc you are prevented from manually removing it from inventory.
Dragon diciplines in LOB difficulty reach like 300hp plus due to this combined with its conc increase.
If, instead, you start the new campaign with the "Import" button, that just brings the character, leaving behind the familiar and any marker effects - so you can summon a new one.
The cost, of course, is that it resets all of your recruited companions to the default starting point for the new campaign, and you won't have them in your party until you can recruit them normally.
In "normal" gameplay with one created character and a recruited party, this trick is absolutely not worthwhile.
Yes that is true. Im usually solo playing though.
But by importing save file im pretty sure you will be able to cast find familiar again in bg2ee.
Loading final save in sod, im unsure.
Loading final save in TOB im unsure as well.